


Three Dates

by WahlBuilder



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern - All Media Types, Sinestro (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Dates, M/M, Polyamorous Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal was not spying on Sinestro. Okay, he <i>was</i> spying. Because Sinestro was meeting Black Adam. And then Hal sort of met Black Hand—or Black Hand happened to him—and everything went downhill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two dates gone wrong

**Author's Note:**

> Hal Jordan/Kyle Rayner and Trapper/Virgo are mentioned.  
> One-sided Black Hand/Hal, if you squint.

It had started weird. Even weirder than usual, that is.

With Hal deflecting advances of Black Hand. And it's not that Hal was cruel, not that he didn't see how lonely Hand usually was... Just. A graveyard was not the most romantic place. Certainly not with all the dead forming a giant heart on the ground.

And it's not that Hal was spying on Sinestro, but, you know, keep your enemies close, and your on-and-off boyfriends who tend to do some questionable shit and then turn your world upside down closer. At least keep an eye on them.

Hal knew Thaal was on Earth. Visiting an _old friend_.

So, okay, Hal was spying on him. Because he wanted to know why Sinestro was on Earth and why he was visiting someone who was not Hal. Because when your questionable-shit-doing friend and lover is meeting someone named Black Adam, who is also a megalomaniac and a king and kind of god, questionable shit is bound to happen.

That's how Hal turned up at an old cemetery—with the best view of the palace—and that's where Hand found him. It was as if, Hal thought, Hand had a Hal-dar.

And it's not that he wouldn't have asked Hand out. Okay, he wouldn't have, but if Hand came to him and asked nicely himself... Hal would consider it. With the Corps missing and things with Thaal being uncertain again... Hal was lonely. Virgo and Trap were off on a vacation—“Gotta take the rich boy to the finest brothel,” Trap had promised—and Hal couldn't bother Jim again.

And maybe a date or two would've helped Hand. And maybe Hal was really that lonely.

So, he was sitting on a tree branch and spying on Thaal through binoculars. Apparently, Teth-Adam decided to throw a welcome party. He was playing a generous host, offering Thaal drinks and bending to talk to him—really, really close—and brushing his hands over Thaal’s shoulders and lower back, and Thaal was tense, and Hal growled, “He doesn’t like being touched without his permission, you Teth-Prick!”

“I like being touched.”

Hal nearly toppled over the branch and lowered the binoculars to see Black Hand grinning at him and waving from the ground, looking sickly and overly cheerful. So, the usual. “Hello, Jordan. I’ve brought you a present.”

And apparently, Hal had been so immersed in spying on Thaal, he hadn’t noticed that a bunch of zombies had gathered around the tree to form a loose heart. Hal turned his stare to Hand. “Seriously?”

Hand beamed. “Let’s fight?”

Hal sighed, trying to evaluate how to take off the tree without getting stuck in the upper branches. “No, Hand. I’m not having a fight with you. Go… play with the dead.”

It was ridiculous how Hand deflated and his face changed into a kicked puppy look. “The dead want to play with you, Jordan. I want to play with you.”

The zombies let out a collective cheesy moan—and how did they even do that? they didn’t have lungs!—and started shaking the tree.

And that’s how it started.

 

He didn’t want to hurt Hand. He didn’t want to fry his synapses again, Entities knew Hand had his synapses fried enough as it was. Hal was just running around and flying around the cemetery, trying to stop the local zombie-apocalypse and talk Hand out of it.

And apparently, this commotion had attracted attention, because suddenly there was a regal voice asking very regally, “Why are you defiling the dead?”

To which Hal could have answered, _Hand is just lonely, he means no offense_ , but he was sort of stuck trying to pry a bony hand off his leg. And contemplating his life choices.  
Then a familiar voice bellowed, “Jordan! What are you doing here?” And zombies started attacking _everyone_ —including Hand himself, because, it seemed, Teth-Adam had seized control over a handful of them. Or something like that.

And somehow, Hal ended up crouching behind a large tombstone and Thaal ended up by his side and they were taking turns at shooting at the zombies. And trying not to shoot each other.

“I asked you a question, Hal. What are you doing here?”

He sighed and jumped up to ram a ram into a zombie that was shambling to Thaal.

“Happened in the neighborhood,” Hal grunted. He didn’t want to explain himself, he didn’t have to explain himself, not to Thaal.

Thaal yanked at his coat, and Hal ducked back behind the tombstone in time to avoid getting hit by one of Teth-Adam’s stray lightnings.

“You don’t just ‘happen in the neighborhood’,” hissed Thaal, and Hal was momentarily distracted by the realization that he really missed Thaal’s voice. His hissing. Whatever.

“Yeah, neighborhood usually happens to me,” Hal muttered. Why hadn’t he taken off ages ago? Why was he staying here? But he knew he’d miss Thaal’s trail again the moment he went away, and so he was staying to… To do what exactly?

To throw punches at zombies together, it seemed.

“Were you taking a stroll in the graveyard with that madman?”

The mocking tones in Thaal’s voice made Hal whirl around to face him and hiss, “Hand’s not mad, he just needs help! A lot of help! And it’s not that you are any saner. And what are _you_ doing here? Look out!” He shot a ray at a pair of zombies, scattering chips of their bones everywhere, then continued, “What are you doing here? Exchanging tokens of admiration with Black Adam?”

“That’s none of your business! To your left!”

Hal threw himself to the right as Thaal sent a shower of arrows behind his back.

“That’s my business, always,” Hal said, shaking a finger at Thaal, “because all your business turns into me saving the world from you or into saving you from the world!”

Beautiful golden eyes peered into him, then thunder clapped overhead, announcing Teth-Adam’s strike, and Thaal grabbed his arm and hauled him upright.

Hal was tolerating none of this shit. “Hey, let go!”

“We should get out of here.” And just like that Hal found himself pressed to Thaal’s chest, with one yellow-and-black clad arm wound around his waist, and they took off to the sky, and Hal had forgotten to even mewl a protest.

Whooshes of air around them snapped Hal out of stupor, and he grumbled, “To my city.”

“That’s where I was heading.”

Hal didn’t like his matter-of-fact tone, and he had a feeling of nearly slipping out of Thaal’s grasp, so he wrapped his arms around Thaal’s waist, too. “I can fly on my own, you know.”

“Yes. I know.” Thaal sounded amused more than annoyed.

It all felt terribly familiar.

God, he missed Thaal.


	2. One date gone right

By the time Hal realized where exactly in Coast City they were heading to, he couldn’t do more than state the obvious, “We’re going to my brother’s apartment.”

And it was infuriating how calm Thaal continued to be. “Yes.”

It made Hal close gates on an avalanche of questions. How did Thaal know where Jim lived? Why were they heading there?..

Did Thaal know that it was his only place to crash when he stayed on Earth?

“Thaal.” That only earned him a tightening hold on his waist, which… wasn’t unpleasant, exactly. “ _Thaal_.”

But then Thaal was already lowering him on the balcony, more gently than Hal would have expected, and it was things like this that made Hal ache in a nameless way.

“You feel safe here.”

Hal had to lean casually on the wall, pretend to be casual, because, right, he missed Thaal so much, and he didn’t know what to do with it. And Thaal didn’t say, _You are safe here_ ; he said, _You feel safe here_ , and Hal wanted to punch him in the face, wanted to punch himself in the face, because Thaal knew him better than anyone.

Thaal didn’t land himself, he was just hovering behind the railing, unreadable, his arms at his sides, not crossed over his chest, and he had always been taller than Hal, bastard, and delicate in the way that made him look like a perfected porcelain statuette, glazed in reds and goldens and blacks, and it was horrible how Hal ached, and missed him, and wanted everything to be back to how it had been.

It took Hal a moment to get a grip on himself, and reach out over the railing. “Come on. You spoiled my date with Hand, you have to make up for it.” And he didn’t know what exactly he meant by that, it’s just… He didn’t want Thaal to go.

“ _You_ spoiled my date with Teth-Adam. Or that is what he—and you—thought. But for me, it wasn’t a date. Just business.”

Thaal’s voice was so soft, and Hal felt so stupid and dropped his outstretched hand—only, Thaal caught it, and he was always so, so strong, and then Thaal was stepping down onto the balcony and there wasn’t enough room for Hal to breathe. He thought, dumbfounded, about how regal Thaal looked—when he had let Parallax into himself and the Entity had clad him in heavier armor and draped a cloak about his form—and the other moments, the ones that made Hal’s breath hitch, when he had watched and watched and watched in the dim glow of his ring at Thaal breathing slowly and deeply, and the way his skin had been outlined in the darkness of the room, under the sheets half-draped over him, and those moments had made Hal understand with a wrenching certainty that he would die for this man.

“Then…” Hal licked his suddenly dry lips, and the yellow glow dissipated around Thaal, and they were so unbearably close Hal could taste Thaal’s sharp and flowery scent, like an unrolling thunderstorm. “Let’s go on a date.”

Thaal moved past him, opened the door to the apartment, as if he did it often enough for his hands move the certain way, as if he—God, _how many times had he been here_ , and just near the balcony door stood the couch Hal always crashed on when he visited his brother…

Watching Thaal—not fighting him, not fighting _with_ him, just watching—was as painful as it was watching Kyle, joyous, bright, plunge himself into the Source Wall and disappearing in it. Only with Kyle, it was only once; with Thaal, it felt like this all the time. With Kyle, it was certain, the joy of being loved and of being in love; with Thaal…

“What are you doing?” Hal croaked.

Thaal was moving easily, circling the cough, the low coffee table, not looking around in wonder of a guest, but sliding his gaze across the space with the certainty of someone who knows the place. Then golden eyes flicked to Hal. “It is good that I have a glamour-button on me.”

Hal opened his mouth to ask—and stared: Thaal’s form blurred for a moment into a much more human, less Korugarian form, and Hal could have screamed, _how could you give up what you are, I don’t care what people say, get back to me_ … Then Thaal blurred back to himself and regarded something on his right wrist. “Hm. It’s working. Good. But I need appropriate clothes.”

Hal just stood there, and thought he was dreaming, like he had dreamed Thaal standing over him while he had lain on the couch right here—only, now he was thinking, _hoping_ beyond reason that those memories might not be a dream, after all. That Thaal had been here, once, twice, more, watching over him as Hal had watched over him many lifetimes ago when everything had been different.

And then, it was like something had been switched inside him, and Hal scrambled to the duffel that contained his few Earthly possessions, the few things that were his and from here, that he kept at Jim’s. They were in chaos inside, he could never keep his things neat, but they were clean, Sue probably washed the clothes, and he fished out a black turtleneck and cargo pants, fast, fast, his heart beating fast, afraid that Thaal might leave. “Put… put this on. Should be well.”

Thaal regarded the clothes, but Hal couldn’t read him again, and could almost scream from it. How did they come to this? How could he not understand what Thaal was thinking anymore?

But then Thaal put the pants on, right over his yellow-and-black uniform. They were a tad too wide for him, sitting low on his hips, and Hal’s fingers twitched with the memory of the shape of the sharp bones, so he turned back to the duffel and took out a leather belt with a heavy metal buckle with a bald eagle form etched into it.

Thaal put the belt through the loops, buckled, then put on the turtleneck. Hal had a brief flash of tugging it off Thaal and tousling his perfect hair. It sat not as snuggly over Thaal’s form as it was on Hal, but it stretched over his shoulders, and the sleeves were half an inch too short, so Thaal tugged them up to his elbows, showing powerful arms clad in tight yellow, encased in almost golden bands of the uniform.

It was startling to see his hands, unguarded, ungloved, and Hal used to study them, ask about the tiniest scars, rub the knuckles of the delicate, clever fingers, rub into the meat of his palms, massaging scented oil over the calloused skin, though the callouses on the fingers of the left hand never went away—the callouses of a sangen player, etched from the singing strings.

Hal had to turn away and to stare at the wall, unseeing, trying to get his shuddering breathing under control. It was worse than fighting Thaal, because it gave him hope, because it assaulted him with memories, because it opened him raw and made him look at the fears and dreams and wishes he had been trying to avoid. Made him face his regrets and his guilts.

“Where do you want to go?” Hal rasped, raking a hand through his hair, judging himself ready, guarding himself enough to show nothing of it to Thaal. His fingers caught in his long hair, and he winced. “Should cut this off.”

“Don’t. I like it.”

He looked back, over his shoulder, and something familiar flickered in the golden eyes, there—and gone, too fast for Hal to catch it.

“Bring me to where it’s quiet. Peaceful.” It sounded almost pensive, like they were talking about something else, but Hal didn’t know if he could bring Thaal peace, if both of them could even reach peace.

 

Thaal flicked the glamour device back on, and it made him look a bit shorter than usual. Hal missed the delicate curve of sharp-tipped ears, the intense red of Thaal’s skin that had taught Hal to notice signs of Thaal’s excitement, anger, arousal other than the flush of the skin. The glamour somewhat concealed the willowy aspect of Thaal’s long limbs, too.

It felt so utterly wrong, like Hal was walking beside a badly made copy of Thaal, here to taunt him, but then Thaal took his hand, and his skin was too cool to be human, too smooth except for the scars, the texture so subtly different, and he shot Thaal a startled look and tried not to cling to him too desperately.

“I’m supposed to be your date. Couples often hold hands.” And Thaal raised one eyebrow, and the glamour changed the perfect arch of them, too, so that Hal barely resisted the urge to try and rub his thumb over the line, making them turn back again to their true form.

He was pathetic.

He didn’t know how he managed to lead Thaal to the park, all his focus was on Thaal and on their joined hands, the point of contact between them. He wondered whether he could hold Thaal from going away if he held tight enough.

“Uncle Hal!”

He shook his head as his mind registered that the shout was for him, and stumbled with relief, his hand slipping from Thaal’s. He kneeled and caught two kids in his arms. “Jane! Howard!”

“Didn’t know you would drop by.”

Hal looked up and squinted at the sunlight pouring down between leaves. His family was here, his Earthian family. “Hey, Jim,” he whispered. The world tilted around him, and settled, and he got up.

The kids clung themselves to his legs, and he startled when he remembered that Thaal was standing behind him. Guilt surged up in him. “Jim, it’s—”

“Thaal Sinestro.” He was moving forward, flowing in a way only he could, flowing in a way of a warrior or a dancer, the way of contained strength and the surety in his abilities, reaching out his right hand, and Hal dimly remembered that it was not a customary gesture of Korugar. It was an Earthian gesture—Thaal knew how to greet his brother.

“James Jordan.” Jim shook hands with him, glancing at Hal for a brief moment, then smiled. “This is Sue, and our kids, Howard and Jane.”

“Hello!” the kids said in unison.

Hal put his hands on their heads. He didn’t know if he was trying to protect them from Thaal, or trying to ground himself.

Thaal turned to them, then looked around, making Hal think about the time when they had slipped after a patrol, long, long time ago, to soar in an asteroid ring, chasing each other around and laughing like madmen.

And then Thaal turned the glamour off.

Hal’s niece and nephew shrieked, “Alien!” and dashed to Thaal who laughed and crouched to ruffle their hair.

Hal rubbed palms on his eyes.

He startled when Sue put her small hand on his elbow. “He’s one of your…” But she trailed off, probably taking in the gold bands on Thaal’s forearms and the massive yellow ring on his left hand. “Oh.”

“What’s with the hair, brother?”

Hal was glad for the distraction, he turned to Jim, but half of his focus was on the happy giggles of the kids and Thaal’s low rumble of chuckles as he, no doubts, showed them some constructs.

“He likes it,” Hal blurted out, distracted, then looked at Jim, and turned his eyes away.

“I see.”

Hal was certain Jim could _really_ see right into him, but he kept silent.

Sue walked past him, light flowery perfume trailing after her, her flowery dress swaying gently with her steps. She bent slightly and told something to Thaal and gave him her hand. He squeezed her fingers carefully, and smiled, and nodded, then laughed as his attention switched to Jane who was trying to crawl into his lap.

“I love him.” It wrenched out of Hal, heavy and quiet, with a mass of thousand suns, and Hal swayed with the force of it.

“Yes. I guessed that.” Jim stood by his side, watching his kids chase a brilliant golden dragon construct, watching his wife talking to a tall, crimson-skinned, golden-eyed alien who was the love of Hal’s life.

“He was my mentor,” Hal continued. He couldn’t stop it, it was spilling and spilling out of him. “And we were lovers, and then we were no more, and we have a daughter but she’s mad at us both, and—”

“Woah, woah, slow down!” Jim squeezed his arm, and Hal felt like crying. He turned to his brother, and Jim looked astonished. “A daughter?”

Hal nodded. Then shook his head and rubbed his eyes again. “It’s complicated.”

“Who’s the mother?”

It was funny how confused Jim looked, though maybe Hal was just hysterical and it made everything seem funny. “Thaal. Korugarian men can—But, he couldn’t, shouldn’t have been able to, says it’s something that goes away with age and he was old—but then… And we were lovers, but I didn’t know!—And then everything happened, and I arrested him, and they tried him, and, and I didn’t know! He didn’t tell me anything! And his friend, Arin Sur, she offered to bear the child, because, because Thaal was sentenced to, to annihilation, I didn’t _know_ , but then Soranik was adopted, and, and things happened, and I met her when she was already an adult, and he only told me not long ago, and she didn’t know it either, and she’s mad at us both, and _I don’t know_!”

He hid his face in his palms, but Jim pried his hands away.

“Hey. It’s okay. Not that I understood most of it, but it’s okay, Hal.” And Jim’s voice was so soft, so gentle, soothing, and Hal threw a glance at Thaal: he walked down the alley, talking with Sue and with the kids.

“I want him back,” Hal whispered. “I want _us_ back.”

“What about Kyle?” Jim asked just as quietly.

Hal shook his head again. “He knows. He doesn’t approve of it, of Thaal, but he… understands. Though he doesn’t know Thaal like I do. I will never give up on him, never.”

“Can he eat human food?”

It was so unexpected, and Hal blinked at Jim. “W-what?”

Jim adjusted his glasses. “Well, if he’s here, we should as well invite him for a dinner. I don’t think Jane would let him go anytime soon anyway.”

And it was two parts of his life, clashing, merging, and sunlight was pouring down on them, and Thaal was playing with kids who had immediately took a liking to him, and then he looked over his shoulder, and his golden eyes caught the light.

And Hal smiled. “I think he will agree. To stay for dinner.”


End file.
